Nature Communications (May 2020)

Social-media and newspaper reports reveal large-scale meteorological drivers of floods on Sumatra

  • Dariusz B. Baranowski,
  • Maria K. Flatau,
  • Piotr J. Flatau,
  • Dwikorita Karnawati,
  • Katarzyna Barabasz,
  • Michal Labuz,
  • Beata Latos,
  • Jerome M. Schmidt,
  • Jaka A. I. Paski,
  • Marzuki

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-16171-2
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 1
pp. 1 – 10

Abstract

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Floods are an important natural disaster on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, but their driving mechanisms are not well understood. Here, the authors utilize data from twitter messages and local newspaper reports to show that convectively coupled Kelvin waves play a key role in promoting floods on Sumatra.